This is my birthday, my thirtieth. It will not appear wonderful to you, when I tell you, that before the arrival of your letter, I had been thinking with a great weight of different feelings, concerning you, and your dear brother, for I have good reason to believe, that I should not now have been alive, if in addition to other miseries, I had had immediate poverty pressing upon me. I will never again remain silent so long. It has not been altogether indolence, or my habit of procrastination which have kept me from writing, but an eager wish,--I may truly say, a thirst of spirit, to have something honourable to tell you of myself. At present I must be content to tell you something cheerful. My health is very much better. I am stronger in every respect, and am not injured by study, or the act of sitting at my writing desk; but my eyes suffer if at any time I have been intemperate in the use of candle light. This account supposes another, namely, that my mind is calm, and more at ease. My dear sir, when I was last with you at Stowey, my heart was often full, and I could scarcely keep from communicating to you the tale of my distresses, but could I add to your depression, when you were low? or how interrupt, or cast a shade on your good spirits, that were so rare, and so precious to you? * * * * * I found no comfort but in the direct speculations;--in the 'Ode to Dejection,' which you were pleased with. These lines, in the original, followed the line 'My shaping spirit of imagination,'-- 'For not to think of what I needs must feel, But to be still and patient, all I can, And haply by abstruse research to steal From my own nature all the natural man; This was my sole resource, my only plan And that which suits a part infests the whole, And now is almost grown the temple of my soul.' I give you these lines for the spirit, and not for the poetry. * * * * * But better days are arrived, and are still to come, I have had visitations of--that I may yet be something of which those who love me may be proud. I cannot write that without recalling dear Poole. I have heard twice, and written twice, and I fear by a strange fatality, one of the letters will have missed him. Leslie[105] was here some time ago. I was very much pleased with him. And now I will tell you what I am doing. I dedicate three days in the week to the 'Morning Post,' and shall hereafter write, for the far greater part, such things as will be of a permanent interest as any thing I can hope to write; and you will shortly see a little essay of mine, justifying the writing in a newspaper.